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Leona Banh Mi – Albuquerque, New Mexico

“I’m not allowed in the Vietnamese sandwich shop anymore. They decided to banh mi for life.” During an ice-breaker at what promised to be a stressful project planning meeting, all participants were asked to stand up and describe their favorite childhood Christmas gift. For the most part, favorite gifts conformed to gender stereotypes. Male colleagues waxed fondly about GI Joe action figures (don’t ever call them dolls), Star Wars Lego sets and their first bike. Females in our group described Barbie dolls, playhouses and cabbage patch kids. Then it was my turn. “My favorite Christmas gift as a child,” I explained “was a dictionary.” Copious groaning ensued though for some reason no one was surprised. As a child for whom English was a second language, my first dictionary was a good friend, one consulted frequently when reading my other favorite tome, the encyclopedia. Yeah, I was a weird kid. Perhaps because it was so ponderous and not a few gazillion bytes of information floating around some ethereal concept called the cloud, the dictionary was much more uncool back then. It was also much more mysterious and stodgy. No one seemed to know how new words were added from year-to-year (I…

Frank’s Famous Chicken & Waffles – Albuquerque, New Mexico

If one measure of success is having the wherewithal to pursue those things you love most, Frank Willis has led a very successful life. A towering skyscraper of a man, Frank has had four great loves in his life: family, basketball, music and chicken and waffles. They’ve been his passions and his raisons d’être. Maybe that’s why he’s done them all well. You might remember Frank Willis as a heavily coveted recruit who played basketball for the University of New Mexico Lobos, then the only game in town. At 6’8” and 260 pounds, he was a physical presence down on the post, helping the Lobos win the Western Athletic Conference championship in 1994. Knee injuries kept him from achieving the promise he showed as a high school senior in Los Angeles. After his playing days ended, Frank remained in Albuquerque where he pined for the soul food—especially chicken and waffles–so readily available in the City of Angels. When he couldn’t find the foods he coveted, he began preparing them himself. While he cites his mother, grandmother and aunt as formative influences on his cooking, Frank also waxes nostalgic about his frequent visits to Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, a beloved Los…

Burger Boy – Cedar Crest, New Mexico

The vividly hued threads that comprise a beautiful community tapestry are its diverse and unique characters. Some are quirky and eccentric, some are brash and loud, others are indistinct and don’t stand out, but all are essential in weaving that beautiful community tapestry, that compendium of personalities that make up a whole. One of the most vivid threads in the rich and diverse tapestry that is the alpine community of Cedar Crest, New Mexico was prolific artist, carver and tinkerer Ross Ward. Before settling in New Mexico, Ross was a show painter for carnivals, traversing the country for more than three decades. It was in Cedar Crest that Ross built Tinkertown, a folk art environment replete with an impressive array of miniatures and memorabilia of all kinds. Note: The next best thing to visiting Tinkertown is learning all about it on New Mexico True Television (Season 3, Episode 3) which is thankfully still available online even though the wonderful program no longer airs. Tinkertown is his legacy, the manifestation of his belief in self-determination and freedom. Now a roadside attraction, it welcomes thousands of guests each year. One of Ross Ward’s most well-known artistic endeavors hangs not on a wall…

Havana Restaurant – Albuquerque, New Mexico

“Cuba has bread and pork, but not enough vegetables. The food we were served was never warm enough. Cuba is not a place for vegetarians, picky eaters, or the gluten free.” ~Elinor Robin, PhD On 26 April 1954, CBS-TV aired the 93rd episode of I Love Lucy.  Watching the rerun decades later was essentially my introduction to Cuban food…sort of.  In the memorable episode Ricky decides to quit show business and open up a diner in which Cuban food would be the featured fare.  The Ricardos enter into a precarious partnership with their friends and neighbors Fred and Ethel Mertz.  Because Fred and Ethel have the diner savvy and Ricky has the name that brings in diners, unequal division of labor ensues.  Fred and Ethel are stuck behind the counter churning out and plating food while Ricky and Lucy run the front-of-the-house where they glad-hand with guests.  Ultimately Fred and Ethel weary of being treated like hired hands instead of partners and storm out. Without the Mertzes know-how, the diner’s early success quickly dissipates.  Ricky continually confuses Lucy with incorrect diner jargon and Lucy messes up every order she gets.  The Mertzes return triumphantly to discover a completely empty diner.…

Gray’s Coors Tavern – Pueblo, Colorado

Dante Alighieri’s classic poem “A Divine Comedy” recounts a spiritual journey in which the author was guided by ancient Roman poet Virgil through hell, purgatory, and paradise.  Their path takes them through the nine circles of Hell where they witness the punishments suffered for all eternity by the souls of deceased sinners.  The deepest circle of Hell, where Satan resides, is reserved for history’s worst traitors–Judas Iscariot, Brutus, Cassius…and maybe a certain New Mexico food blogger who not only admits there is wonderful green chile to be found outside the paradise that is the Land of Enchantment; he believes it’s possibly just as good, even better than some New Mexico chile.  That chile, from Pueblo, Colorado isn’t just an “it’ll do” substitute, but a bona fide equal (or superior) to much of the green chile grown in Hatch, Chimayo, Lemitar, Deming, Jarales and any number of other purveyors of chile fecundity across New Mexico.   “Gasp!  Heresy!” you lash out.  “Next you’re going to tell us the Denver Broncos, not the Dallas Cowboys, are America’s team.  Before you condemn me to an eternity of wailing, gnashing of teeth and non-stop watching of The View, hear me out.  My “heretical declaration” is based…

The Rock Inn Mountain Tavern – Estes Park, Colorado

During my years at St. Anthony’s in Peñasco, I frequently tried the patience of the saintly nuns.   Thankfully capital punishment was not permissible or you wouldn’t be reading this.  It’s bad enough I wore out a few rulers and hopefully one elderly nun’s knuckles which often found their way to my head (that may explain a few things).  I wasn’t a malicious student, just one who didn’t always conform.  It wasn’t the age of “doing your own thing” though I certainly did my best to be an individual.  Albeit, I was an individual who didn’t do his homework or study for tests (but still managed to ace them all). My antics were never deliberately destructive.  In some ways I was like a gangly newborn giraffe trying to get my legs under me.  Unusually tall for an elementary school student in Northern New Mexico, I was a poster child for clumsiness.  Fellow students feared my lack of coordination would result in injury.  When the nuns insisted on having us square dance, the girls feared my do-si-do more than they did an impromptu math quiz.  My dancing resembled a combination of roller skating on ice and steer wrestling.    My Kim…

The Post Chicken & Beer – Estes Park, Colorado

In 1974 prolific author Stephen King and his wife Tabitha spent a night in Room 217 of The Stanley, a a 140-room Colonial Revival hotel in Estes Park, about five miles from the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park.  The hotel staff was preparing to close the hotel for the season so the Kings found themselves the only guests in the place.  King wrote about the experience on his website: “Wandering through its corridors, I thought that it seemed the perfect—maybe the archetypical—setting for a ghost story. That night I dreamed of my three-year-old son running through the corridors, looking back over his shoulder, eyes wide, screaming. He was being chased by a fire-hose. I woke up with a tremendous jerk, sweating all over, within an inch of falling out of bed. I got up, lit a cigarette, sat in the chair looking out the window at the Rockies, and by the time the cigarette was done, I had the bones of the book firmly set in my mind.” As you ascend the hill leading to The Stanley, you’re struck at the grandeur and immensity of the complex.  It’s hard to imagine Jack Nicholson demolishing a door with an axe,…

Cafe Genevieve – Jackson, Wyoming

My friend and former Intel colleague Steve Caine will forever rue the day he asked me to help him with an expense report for a business trip he made to Portland, Oregon. His itemized expense report indicated he had dined twice at Chevy’s, a middling quality Americanized Mexican restaurant which wouldn’t survive in the tough Albuquerque market. I teased him mercilessly. Worse, when my boss saw what the commotion was all about, he immediately put Steve on double-secret probation. Steve has never lived down visiting a Chevy’s in Portland where he could have had some of the country’s freshest and best seafood. When the din died down, Steve admitted somewhat sheepishly that after two days in Portland, he was missing New Mexican food so desperately that he visited the closed facsimile he could find. It was either Chevy’s or a restaurant named Machissimo Mouse (seriously). In truth, I’ve been there, too…well, not to Chevy’s and definitely not to Machissimo Mouse, but at a point in my business travels where the craving for New Mexico’s inimitable cuisine strikes like an addict’s need for a fix. My Kim and I had been away from New Mexico for eleven days during our June,…

Miazga’s – Jackson, Wyoming

The Jackson Hole Valley is so breathtaking that in the 1970s when the US launched Voyager II into space, scientists attached an Ansel Adams photograph of the valley as a representation of life on Earth in the event aliens discovered the vessel.  Spanning two spectacular mountain ranges (the Grand Tetons and Grand Ventres), Jackson Hole just may be the most picturesque valley on the planet.  It’s an Eden with winter.  It’s also among the most expensive and desirable havens in the universe.  Space aliens captivated by the Ansel Adams photograph and wanting to visit had better up the credit limits on their credit cards.  They might also have to lower their expectations as to  intelligent life on Earth.  The valley is home away from home to Kanye West and Kim Kardashian among other glitterati.  Well-heeled aliens will find luxurious amenities throughout the valley.  Four- and five-star resorts and hotels offer world-class services, dining options and spas sure to spoil any extraterrestrial.  So will concierge services that lead to the very best of the Valley.  It won’t be longe before our sojourning aliens are getting fitted for tuxes and gowns so they can attend film, music and art events.  Soon they’ll…

Bigwood Bread Cafe – Ketchum, Idaho

Ernest Hemingway spent much of the roaring twenties in Paris, a city whose own liberal attitudes attracted poets, painters and writers from throughout the world. Paris was a vibrant city which drew many expats from the so-called “lost generation” of cynical young people disillusioned with the materialism and individualism prevalent in society at the time.  As a young writer penning “A Moveable Feast,” Hemingway observed: “You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris,” because all the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food.” An avid outdoorsman, Ernest Hemingway, was a Sun Valley habitué even before establishing a permanent residence in Ketchum two years before his death in 1961.  One of Hemingway’s favorite watering holes was The Sawtooth Club, a decidedly masculine appointed establishment where he would have been right at home.  While enjoying breakfast at Bigwood Bread about a mile north of The Sawtooth Club, I wondered to myself if Hemingway would have enjoyed that bread.  Surely after having experienced Paris and its incomparable boulangeries, he would have become addicted to bread.   Alas, Bigwood Bread, the…

The Sawtooth Club – Ketchum, Idaho

Our server Kara (who resembles Maggie Gyllenhaal but much more attractive) reasons that The Sawtooth Club is the number one restaurant in the country.  That was news to me so I asked how she arrived at that conclusion.  Her reasoning is that the Sawtooth Club has been the highest rated restaurant in the Sun Valley for five consecutive years.  The Sun Valley is currently rated the number one ski resort in the country.  Ergo, one highest rated restaurant plus one highest rated ski resort equals the best restaurant in the country.  That’s akin to fuzzy math, but Kara is so cute I was almost inclined to agree with her. From the balcony of our rental in Ketchum, Idaho we could almost make out the steep, grassy slopes which weeks before had been covered in snow.  What we couldn’t see at all was the craggy Sawtooth Mountains which backdrop the village of Ketchum and the fabled Sun Valley.  Most of the valley was shrouded in pea soup-thick soup with a persistent rain falling throughout much of our two day stay.  The Sawtooth Mountains hold a special place in my imagination as well as Hollywood’s.  Movies such as the visually stunning Jeremiah…